Dubai: Playmakers Omar Abdul Rahman and Majid Hassan along with winger Ali Saleh have been excluded from the list of probables for the upcoming friendly match against Uzbekistan later this month.
The UAE list of 29 players was released by national team coach Jorge Luis Pinto late on Thursday with the players being asked to report to Al Nasr Club’s Humaid Al Tayer Stadium on Saturday evening.
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The 10-day camp is part of Fifa’s allocated time for national teams to prepare for the joint qualifiers for the 2022 World Cup and the 2023 AFC Asian Cup. The next round of qualifiers were scheduled to be held during October, but had to be postponed until 2021 due to the prevailing coronavirus situation.
Most of the 29 players figured in the list were present at the three-week training camp held in Belgrade, Serbia, in August. But the camp had to be hastily curtailed by a few days after Fifa and the AFC jointly announced the postponement of the qualifying rounds.
A statement from the UAE Football Association (UAE FA) disclosed that four players – Omar Abdul Rahman, Abdullah Ramadan, Ali Saleh and Majid Hassan – have all been excluded due to “the condition of their injuries and lack of readiness”.
As per the programme laid out for this camp, the UAE team will play a friendly against Uzbekistan on October 12, and the UAE FA is also in the process of firming up a second friendly match on October 8. Kuwait was initially scheduled to play the UAE on October 8, but called in with a late apology.
“The camp comes as a continuation of the preparation programme that was launched at the end of last July with an internal gathering in Al Ain for a period of 12 days, followed by a camp in the Serbian capital Belgrade for a period of 14 days, during which the technical staff focused on the physical side and raising the physical fitness by having a single friendly match against one of the Serbian clubs,” the statement related.
The UAE National Teams Committee led by Abdul Kader Hassan met with other members including Mohammad Obaid Hammad, Yasser Salem, Khalid Al Ka’abi, Salim Al Naqbi and Hassan Fahad before deciding on the next step for the national team.
After converging on Saturday evening, the squad will have daily training sessions under Pinto, and will also include theory and technical meetings focused on strategy and planning while playing.
Squad
Ali Khasief, Khalid Essa, Adel Al Hossani, Mohammad Barghash, Abdul Aziz Haikal, Khalifa Al Hammadi, Mohammad Marzouq, Esmail Ahmad, Walid Abbas, Faris Juma, Yousuf Jaber, Salim Rashid, Khamis Esmail, Majeed Surour, Tariq Ahmad, Mohammad Al Attas, Ahmad Barman, Fabio de Lima, Jassim Yaqoub, Bandar Al Ahbabi, Khalfan Mubarak, Khalid Bawazeer, Tahnoun Al Za’abi, Khalid Al Hammadi, Caio Canedo, Harib Abdullah Suhail, Ali Mabkhout, Ahmad Khalil, Sebastian Tagliabue
